


But Right Here Feels Like Home

by Flynn_Voltage_Taggart



Category: Doom (Video Games), Half-Life, Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Multi, it's mindless freeguy117 cuddle indulgence, they/them pronouns for Doomslayer, with a side of Halo lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28172616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flynn_Voltage_Taggart/pseuds/Flynn_Voltage_Taggart
Summary: "We won or we think we didWhen you went away you were just a kidAnd if you lost it all and you lost itWell, we'll still be there when your war is overLift your head and look out the windowStay that way for the rest of the day and watch the time go"Waking up safely and snuggly under warn blankets and surrounded by people who would die for him out of love and not obligation is something new to the Master Chief.
Relationships: Doom Marine | Doom Slayer | Doomguy/Gordon Freeman/John-117 | Master Chief
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	But Right Here Feels Like Home

The details of the dream were hazy at best.

It made sense that Master Chief Spartan 117's brain would try to discard the same dream about his home planet, Eridanus II, he had almost every time he went into cryosleep.

But it wasn't the same dream. Usually, he was a little kid again, a scrappy young student who knew nothing of duty or honor and was more inclined to fixate on winning basic schoolyard games instead of vast interstellar combats. Warped and wavering impressions of his parents often lingered just out of reach. This dream only really shared a setting. 

He was an adult in this sleepy musing, although the presence of a child was definitely there. A name tried to present itself from his memory. It was something with a J. It couldn't be John. That was his name, even if he was one of few to know that anymore. Josh or Joshie maybe? Either way, he was in a child's bedroom, something bright and colorful with just the slightest touch of overly masculine energy based on the mechanic theme. It felt like something he might have picked out around the age he was when he still lived here, but he could disregard the potential influence of two figures that loomed around the edges of his dream. The pair was not parental, not even in a sense like Halsey, but something warm, something like a team, like childhood friends. The details were fuzzy, but one was broad-shouldered and firm with all the energy of a linebacker while the other was more waifish and slight, not short but distinctly smaller than himself and the other figure, almost bookish in comparison to its counterpart. The dream was bizarre, and yet, it carried the same odd sense of home that his previous dreams of Eridanus II had and that the memories of Reach ached with.

Another odd piece to the dismissal was that he wasn't in cryosleep either. He was in some dingy apartment in some no name town with those two figures from his dream which so happened to be the roommates he was sharing this rather conventional bed with.

Waking up was different now. There was no ache in his joints or sores eating away at his skin, freezer burn as it had jokingly been dubbed. There were no unattended wounds from combats which date's flitted by his consciousness. No layers of armor padding his form constricted his movement and ate away at any signs of life he might give off.

Well, that feeling of heat being leeched away had not completely left, but it was different now. It was not a constrictive biolayer pressed against him like a clammy compact. The chill was not pervasive enough to nip at the warped bones which had to have been set and reset too many times to keep track of. There was no threat of a combatant that he needed to conceal a thermal signature from, no nearby promise of warm weapons or the hiss of nitrogen tubes. The cold that lingered against him was different; it was safe.

Most of his comfort with the newfound frost nipping at his groggy form was the source: none other than his roommate and partner in an unspecified interdimensional clean up contract, Doctor Gordon Freeman.

The Master Chief has a very deliberate way of systematically sorting people to easily pick up on how to interact. Higher ranking officers were obeyed; teammates were fought for and with to the extent of the objective; and threats were eliminated. Freeman had challenged his system. He had presented the prowess of a lower level UNSC member, smart, tactful, and easily lethal presented the proper mix of weaponry and time to plan, but he communicated so much like a civilian and in some manners, acted like one. He was so paradoxical. He looked in many senses to be fragile, human, weak....but the way he clung to life to an almost violent extent....to think of those bugged out eyes behind glasses splattered with the blood of a mindless beast and the slightest impression of a smug grin on his face......In short, the doctor had more than proved himself a worthy ally over the course of their shared combats.

Part of what made Doctor Freeman a good ally was that adaptability, a constant loop of planning and compensating and revising. It extended to the way in which he shared the bed with John. Freeman had quickly learned John's aversion to perception of his body, especially his face. Instead of persisting on with conventional "spooning" rituals, he had adjusted the practices for John's comfort. Freeman kept his hands pressed flat on a non-vital part of John's abdomen, never gripping or searching under the fabric for further warmth. He kept his knees tucked up in a fetal position to never get too close, and he kept his face burrowed in John's chest to avoid having an awkward moment of sleep addled eye contact. Most others would have found this contact cold and distant, but much like every challenge the cold void of the cosmos had thrown at him, Freeman had learned to thrive under these new conditions. In the soft light of dawn, John could see the sprigs of auburn hair riddled with bedhead belonging to the doctor as the muffled sounds of sleep emanated from his robe. Something about it felt like home in a way that he never thought he would feel again.

However, John could not give that bright-minded physicist all the credit. He supposed another part of his comfort with the cold was that there was no absence of a new comforting sense of warmth.

There were the blankets that lay tangled in heaps around and overtop of him. Before this new living arrangement, he could not recall the last time he had been so much as offered a blanket. During training, there were only the stiff bunks which were just passable enough to sprawl out on, starving and exhausted beyond imagining. In his later military career, he spent so much time either remaining wired for three days straight or being stuck in that miserable old freezer that beds were practically a foreign concept. He assumed that he must have had a decent bed back at home, or rather back at Eridanus II. He wondered if it was anything like the neatly made bed with racecar adorned blankets that he had seen in the faded glimpses of his dream. It did not matter much he guessed. He was safe now. He was not just safe but indulging in recently washed sheets without a feeling of impending doom lurking in his chest.

Well, perhaps impending doom was not the best choice of words on his part. Doom was most certainly on the horizon. That kind of went with sharing a bed with Doom, or more specifically the Doom Slayer who John was eternally conflicted on about how to properly abbreviate their name. Impending was also incorrect seeing as Doom was already upon him.

One of the Doom Slayer's most admirable qualities as a teammate was their mix of tenacity and fervor. They truly were willing to rip and tear until it was done. Unlike himself or Doctor Freeman, there was no need for tact based on an underpinning of survival. There were no hesitance. There was their fist in front of them as a nearly unstoppable battering ram to obstacles of blood and bone. In combat, their massive frame brimmed with the blistering rage of a thousand scorned souls seeking vengeance in every minute of carnal destruction the Slayer unleashed. Each heaping fistful of worthless meat carved out of their opponents reminded them of their dedication, their seemingly never-ending fight the behalf of humanity and its radiant potential. In a situation like this, the application of emotions as bone-crushingly powerful as their's played out....interestingly.

The Doom Slayer reigned destruction with their entire body, but they had an equal capacity to create safe haven with their lumbering form, to radiate love, protection, and a supernatural amount of body heat. It was evident in how their form practically smothered Freeman. Their wide chest and legs perfectly blended with Freeman's back to create an almost seamless melding into one monolithic creature entangled in a bunny-themed blanket. One hand perfectly covered the spot over Freeman's heart. It was a perfect cocoon for this ally and would have been nice to observe from a distance, but of course, John could not be spared from such an all-consuming being of protection. 

Unlike the physicist currently nuzzling into his chest to avoid the sunlight starting to stream in through the apartment's windows, the Doom Slayer did not leave John to rest with his hang-ups, or more accurately, they didn't allow him to actively ignore his issues as if they'll disappear on their own. Without fail, he would find the Doom Slayer's warm palm either on his forearm or cheek. They did not rest their limbs idly either. They clung on to him. There was no escaping, not the hold and not the acknowledgement that he was here with this new team which required being reliant and vulnerable with them to survive.

This morning was one in which he found the Doom Slayer's fingers splayed across his cheek. Sleepily, the middle and index finger strummed against the groove of an old scar for the Mjolnir interface and a patch of freckles dotting his ghostly complexion. Their eyes were mostly closed, only small slivers of aqua marine, just enough to know they were reverently casting their gaze at him. It was odd to be seen not as simply as a toy solider or a military tool or an advanced weapon but as a person and an object of affection.

This entire scenario was extremely odd. He and his team has been shuffled across the malleable train carts of the galaxy to a time and a place that he barely had his bearings on. The idea of basic apartment upkeep with bills and vacuuming and food that was not served in bars or tubes was enough uneven footing, but then, he had to open himself up to two strangers who had the same initial sociability and team building mindset as two feral cats. Now, he was further down some infinite list of tasks to beat back the can of worms some reality warping rodeo clown got into with a few new scars to show and a much more crowded bed. It was so much change in such little time. A creature of military regiment and order like himself should have buckled under all of this, and yet, with the feeling of being encompassed by a team he had forged through care and grit, he had never felt more at home.


End file.
